Milan Kundera describes kitsch (within his 1984 novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”), in what he claims is the original definition, as “the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.” He goes on to link this idea of kitsch with both nationalism and revolutionary movements, with communism and anti-communism (note: he’s writing about Czechloslovakia during the Soviet occupation). He also links it with romanticism and religiosity.
While I’d only recently read this novel, I have long been familiar with his idea of kitsch, except as a teenager, I’d called it “disneyfication” in the sense that my world (whitebread middleclass existence in a private Catholic high school) was assaulting me with ridiculous fantasies and expectations, like the saccharine movies of that copywrite-crazy corporation. We were all supposed to grow up and get good jobs, make money, (be white & heterosexual,) get married, have kids and play house in a happy utopia of America=#1! and white-picket fences.
Especially provocative about this concept of kitsch, is that it comprises all sanitized versions of reality, liberal or conservative, especially those rallying around drumbeats and marching human feet. In his story, kitch is both the communist metropolitan atheist utopia and the rural religious utopia. In the modern U.S. of A., kitsch glows from the pride of capitalist big-business (money makes you happy) and beams from the religious national pride (God bless America).
Kundera wrote that kitsch offers a sanitized view of the world in which answers preclude questions and that which is distasteful is expressly excluded. At the same time, he also explains that to some degree, kitsch is a natural part of human existence (a necessary element of romance, for example).
I observe, however, that unnecessary (although awfully convenient) kitsch is far too prevalent and influential. Perhaps it’s always been that way, but I like to think that those of us with critical thinking skills can slip beneath the cracks (of extreme conformity to either the mainstream or to some countering rebellious movement).
